564 TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 



production, to increase production, to cheapen production costs, to grow 

 better crops and more of them. The emphasis has been put upon pro- 

 duction. Now, I am convinced that if during the past forty years we had 

 put even 25 per cent as much time into studying the economic processes 

 that affect agriculture, the influences that affect production, and espe- 

 cially that affect prices, if we had spent even 25 per cent as much time 

 in studies of that sort, we would have rendered a far greater service to 

 the agriculture of the United States. I do not mean to say by that that 

 we should lessen in any way our efforts along production lines; I don't 

 mean to say that we shouldn't continue to improve our varieties of crops 

 and our breeds of live stock, and to cheapen our costs of production, and 

 to study better cultural methods, and studies of breeding, and all that, 

 but I say, in addition to that we must give more attention to what we 

 call agricultural economics — the business side of farming, and if we had 

 given more attention to that we might have anticipated part of the trou- 

 ble that has come upon us and might have avoided it in part. So that, 

 without lessening in any way the work of the department in productive 

 lines, I have been trying to strengthen its work in economic lines during 

 the time I have been there. » 



There are a splendid lot of people in that department. There are men 

 there who have devoted their lives to unselfish service for agriculture. 

 There are men there whose services can hardly be estimated in dollars 

 and cents — running into millions and millions and hundreds of millions 

 of dollars. Dr. Pearson here, who is going to speak to you later, can tell 

 you something of that, because he himself was in the department for two 

 years, and I think he will support everything I have said in commenda- 

 tion of those men. 



Well, I don't want to tire you by talking of the department or of its 

 work. I have found it tremendously interesting, and I think very much 

 worth while. Looking into the future. It seems to me that when we get 

 through this period of stress and depression, and it is my belief that we 

 are through the worst of it and that there will be a gradual improvement 

 from now on, I think we shall find ourselves at the beginning of an en- 

 tirely new era in agriculture in the United States; we will find that we 

 have come to a time when under normal conditions consumption has 

 practically overtaken production, and we will find that we have problems 

 of foreign competition which have not bothered us so much in the past, 

 but which are likely to bother us a good deal in the future. 



Let me suggest just two or three things which the farmers of Iowa 

 should think about with considerable care. We loaned those foreign 

 countries some eleven or twelve billion dollars. That is, we say dollars; 

 in fact, we loaned it in the form of commodities, in foodstuffs and ammu- 

 nition and implements and machinery of all sorts. There Is not enough 

 money over there to pay even the annual Interest charge on that money, 

 and it has got to be paid back in kind; It has got to be paid back in com- 

 modities of one sort or another. It seems to me now that that means 

 that our manufacturing interests are coming Into a period of probably the 

 ""ost severe competition they have ever met, because conditions over- 

 ieas, wages overseas, are much lower than here, the rate of exchange is 



